Ah, if indeed he only loved her! This thought kept running through his mind persistently; it had done so for days; but it had always led him back to the starting point.

Love is not always reasoning with itself.

Perhaps--and the thought filled him with regret--perhaps he was indeed incapable of loving any one as his poet's fancy believed he ought to love.

And this may account for the truth of the statement that genius is rarely successful in love; the ideal is so high that it is out of the reach of life as we, genius or clod, live it.
"Isn't this determination rather sudden ?" he asked, when the pause grew insupportable.
"I have been thinking of it for some time," she replied, smiling.

A woman always finds herself at ease during such crises.